


The Video

by Prismatic Bell (Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor)



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Existential Angst, M/M, Mindfuck, Spoilers for Episode 49A, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, episode format
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-05 07:36:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1810480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor/pseuds/Prismatic%20Bell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his first broadcast after the revolution, Cecil discusses someone the town didn't expect to see again. And he's brought something incredible back with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Video

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the lovely videntefernandez on Tumblr. It wasn't quite as Cecearl as I wanted, but I hope you'll enjoy anyway!
> 
>  
> 
> AN IMPORTANT NOTE BEFORE YOU CONTINUE: Please be aware that I couldn't figure out how to actually embed an audio player for the weather. The words "the weather" will hyperlink you to the weather on YouTube, so make sure you're right-clicking and stuff. If you happen to know how I can go about embedding the song, please let me know! I'm happy to credit for use of your knowhow.

Remember that when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares also into you, and it stares. And stares. And drools, a little. The abyss is dark. The abyss is deep. The abyss is hungry. Welcome to Night Vale.

 

Listeners, it is _so good_ to be back in this booth with no barricades on the door, no secret tunnels out into the vast desert wastes to find food, and no mechanical scorpions attempting to force their way through the window. And it is equally good, if not more good, to know that when I leave this room tonight, it will be without a blazing and unnatural disc of hot gases in the sky, attempting to burn me from my insubstantial footing before I find my way back to my boyfriend and our apartment.

 

Yes, listeners, Carlos is home! And you'll never believe who came with him.

 

Of course, with the return of what passes for normalcy, if anything can ever _truly_ be normal, in our little town, there must be a return to what passes for normal reporting. And so, the Community Calendar.

 

Monday, there is a party in the library from two o'clock until—well, listeners, I'm afraid the bulletin is actually very smudged with some very ominous black stains, but it's a party in the library from two o'clock until some time. The price of admission is three canned goods or one fresh item for the Night Vale Food Pantry, with a suggested donation of raw meat. Hm. Tuesday, the staff at Dark Owl Records will question your existence. Who are you, anyway? No, really, who _are_ you? Are you anyone at all?

 

Wednesday has been canceled again. City Council will vote next week on whether to include Wednesday in the calendar at all. Thursday, they say, has not been pulling its weight around here, and may have to be taught a lesson. Friday will be an exact rerun of last Friday, but slightly, subtly different. You will laugh in different places. You will cry, perhaps, when you did not before. You will go to bed, and have the strange sense that perhaps we are all trapped in an infinite loop of sameness. 

 

Listeners, I cannot understand what happened last evening, when Carlos and Dana finally re-entered this plane. With them, they brought . . . Earl Harlan. Earl, our erstwhile Scoutmaster who was last seen being dragged into another dimension by eerily silent, ghostly children during Night Vale's first Eternal Scout ceremony, has returned . . . somehow diminished. There is no less of him, dear listeners, all of his limbs and teeth are intact and his eyes are only a little hollow, and yet he is quieter, somehow less present, than before.

 

He spoke to me, of course, when Carlos brought him to our apartment and said he didn't know where to leave him, exactly, since all of Earl's things were looted by hooded figures many months ago, and his own house has stood vacant too long to really be healthy to sleep in. Listeners—I think Earl's visit to other places has left him more than a little changed. He insisted to me that things in Night Vale are only an illusion, a fact, dear listeners, that we all know. But then he took me by the shoulders, and said, “Cecil. Cecil, you are not who you are. And neither am I. None of us here are who we are.”

I suggested that he might perhaps be speaking of that terrible sandstorm of so long ago, and told him that while we do not know if former intern Dana is, in fact, former intern Dana or her double, I am quite confident that I am myself. I've met the alternative, after all. But he only shook his head, and repeated himself. “None of us here are who we are. I found this.” And then he handed me a video tape.

 

Earl has been sent today to Carlos' lab for essential testing. More news on this story as it develops.

 

And now, traffic. 

 

Several travelers on Route 800 have reported a strange, shimmering silver mass hovering across the road at some distance. The mass, they say, is not a mirage; it makes a strange noise that no travelers described as “sounding Hawaiian,” and yet, in some deep part of their brains, where they did not know what they were thinking, they all thought it.

 

The Sheriff's Secret Police have advised using care on Route 800, and say that you should not take the bridge.

 

_Do not take the bridge._

 

Shhhh.

 

Former intern Dana just stopped by with a box of cookies. They're really very delicious. She said she passed the dog park on her way in, and curiously enough, listeners, she met a man in a tan jacket who she said seemed strangely familiar, although she is quite certain she does not know him. The man is five or six feet tall, and although she cannot remember his face, she said he was carrying a leather briefcase. The briefcase, she said, was full of flies.

 

Listeners, I've received a string of texts from Carlos. He says that Earl has not responded well to tests, and keeps insisting that I need to watch the video he brought back from the world the strange children dragged him into. He also says, “seven days,” and then, “that was a joke, it's from a movie.” Old Woman Josie has volunteered to have Earl stay with her until he's overcome this latest brush with existential terror and malaise, and Carlos says if I'm not too busy after the broadcast— _oh._ Well. That's not important. Or rather, listeners, it is extremely important, in that most unimportant of ways. Unimportant to you, I might say, and having definitely said it, I take you now to [the weather.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odMdmcgX-a0)

\--------------------------------

Listeners.

 

Listeners, oh. Listeners.

 

During the weather, I received a string of frantic texts from Earl, who apparently managed to hold onto his phone during his many, many months away from Night Vale. He told me that he had not forgotten his last words to me, and that during his isolation he had pondered them many times, wondering from whence they had sprung. And then he found the videotape which he gave to me. “Cecil,” he wrote, in his last text, “please, watch the tape, and tell me, _what year was this_?”

 

Of course, listeners, I couldn't help but be intrigued by such a question. The tape itself is of the standard VHS variety used by basic home video recorders over the last three decades, and does not appear to have been transmuted from an earlier format by virgin sacrifice. It played in the station breakroom video player without complaint or need of cellophane to fix any little torn pieces, you know, where tapes used to wear out—

 

But what was on the tape, listeners. What. Was on. The tape.

 

The timestamp claims that the video is from August eighth, 1995. This, however, is erroneous, because one of the first images on the tape is a cake, with candles, reading _Happy Birthday Cecil_. I did not recognize the face blowing out the candles, listeners, but I recognize my own voice when I hear it. It was my birthday, listeners, although not reflected in either the day or year shown on the tape.

 

The boy with my voice did not have my face.

 

The boy with my voice was wearing clothes I did not recognize, featuring a band I have never listened to, on a shirt in colors I do not wear.

 

I saw many faces I did not recognize, and some faces I recognize, and wish I did not. 

 

There were people, listeners, and they sang, and they put down a cake with my name, and I blew out candles on this terrible tape, and then the boy standing next to me at that birthday party I do not remember, listeners—

 

—kissed me.

 

He looks. Exactly. The same.

 

He is older now. There are laugh lines where there were none before, and the first stray strands of white mixed in his hair. But there is no mistaking Earl Harlan on this tape.

He also does not remember the events on the tape, but says he can date it, he thinks, by the stitches visible on his younger self's arm. He is certain, he says, that this tape is of my fifteenth birthday. Carlos says that date is also impossible, because one of his interns owns the tee-shirt that younger Cecil wears, and she is absolutely positive she bought it in 2010.

 

We do not remember, and we do not remember why we do not remember. We know that there is much we do not know, but how much, we also do not know. We know only this, that the past is gone, and can no longer touch us; and that to remain in it is to imprison oneself.

 

Stay tuned next for the sound of crickets, punctuated occasionally by screeching tires and rending metal. Do not think too long or too hard on your past, listeners. If the past were a creature, it would be a deer: ferocious, and untrustworthy, and full of teeth.

 

Stay safe, my dear listeners. And as always . . . . 

 

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to Night Vale is a production of Commonplace Books. The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin. Today's weather was We Might Fall by Ryan Star. Today's proverb: All you need is love. All you need is love. All you need is love, love, and a healthy sense of existential fear to stand up to the daily horror of life.


End file.
